Certified geek

Having spent all day on the bus to and from Tigard (haven't you heard? Cars are killing us?) I am pleased to report that I passed my second and final test, this one on Operating Systems, which now makes me a proud, officially-certified A+ Technician.

Heh. Which means I'm a certified geek. Yay, me! • 4:20 PM 3 comments

Live and learn

In the past 24 hours I've learned that my sister really only likes IM (instant messaging) when she's on another continent. • 4:35 PM 2 comments

Two guys talking in a bar

These two guys are talking in a bar located high atop a skyscraper. They're the only guys in there, except for the bartender.

The first guy is in a business suit and glasses, and it's clear he's had a lot to drink. He's telling the second guy that the winds are so strong up here, that if someone steps off the balcony, they wouldn't hit the ground. They'd be pushed back up to where they could climb back in.

The second guy obviously doesn't buy it. "That's ridiculous! I've never heard of such a thing," the guy says. "Prove it!"

The first guy finishes his drink in one last gulp, wipes his mouth, and appears to screw up his courage. "OK, fine" he says. He walks over to the balcony, and steps up on the ledge. He's staggering a little, and the wind is at least strong enough to blow back his tie and make him even more wobbly.

He turns around to face the bar, holds out his arms, and falls backward. The second guy didn't think that he'd do it, and yells out and runs over to the balcony to look.

Just as he gets there, the first guy floats up on his back and, buoyed up by the wind, yells, "Quick, pull me in!" The second guy, completely astonished, grabs onto his arm and pulls him back onto the balcony.

"That's the most incredible thing I've ever seen!"

"Oh, man, it's great fun! You should try it!"

The second guy thinks a minute. Maybe he has had enough to drink, after all. He steps up on the balcony ledge, takes a look down, and then turns around and falls backward, just as the first guy had done.

However, the second guy falls straight down and lands in the street far far below.

The first guy walks over to the bar, grinning like a fool.

The bartender looks up, disgusted. "You're a real asshole when you're drunk, Superman."

PS: Go see "Superman Returns"! • 7:43 PM 0 comments

Website policy update

I'm making official a long-held policy of this website:

Anonymous comments will be either deleted or mocked, whichever is funnier.

Please, people, if you're going to comment, at least take a second or two to make up a name. • 2:33 PM 0 comments

The genius of Pete Abrams

As much as I've tried to get my friends to read Sluggy Freelance, it's never really caught on with them. And that makes me cry.

"Sluggy Freelance" is a long-running webcomic written by Pete Abrams, and it concerns a group of friends centered around Torg and Riff. There's really no way I could describe it in a nutshell that wouldn't make it seem really really boring, but believe me, it's not.

The problem with trying to summarize it is that the comic has been running August 1997 - practically an eternity in internet time, so trying to cover all the ins and outs of the evolving storyline would be nearly impossible, and since the humor is mainly character-driven, if you don't get the characters and their backstory, you might not find individual comics funny.

And Abrams has done some huge stories along the way, building gianormous concepts and worlds that would be the entire focus of other, lesser, comics, but are only part of the whole in "Sluggy".

All that being said, his last several week's worth of strips have been making plentiful use of the comedy adage "monkeys are always funny" which was coined by me, by the way, because I'm a comedy genius.

And then, this week, he's managed to link monkeys to boobies.

I'll pause and let that sink in.



Why, yes, yes indeed, that only makes the joke more funny. I'm so glad we're on the same wavelength. • 12:15 PM 0 comments

Sharai did it again

Thanks to my favorite bartender I've discovered a new drink for which my liver will curse Sharai's name 15-20 years from now:

The German Chocolate Cake.

It's apparently made of three parts Stoli Vanil, with one part Frangelico (a hazelnut liqueur), served in a shot glass with a sugared rim and a lemon wedge.

It doesn't look very chocolate-y, being very yellow, at least by the light of the dive bar I was sitting in, but it sure tastes chocolately. Mmmmmm. • 11:39 PM 0 comments

Baby talk

I sat at the bar, nursing my drink. Wait - is it "nursing" when I've been here for an hour and I'm on my third one? No? Damn.

Sharai was shorter than me, but not when wearing 8" platform shoes. Slender, long brown-red hair, callipygian in her red shorts and matching halter, she flirted her way up and down the bar, stopping and chatting with customers. She spent a lot of time with the two dressed-to-the-nines Asian guys. I overheard her tell one in her throaty contralto voice, "Oh, you look sexy, baby, you really do." They ate it up and converted it into a large tip for her.

She and I had done some drinking before when she wasn't on shift. In fact, the last time, I'd been cut off by the other bartender on duty, Suzy, when I'd tried to order a pair of Lemon Drops for Sharai and I. It would have been my 8th or 9th drink for the evening, sure, but it would also have been my last, and I had had dreams of it being a social lubricant as well: my apartment was nearby and actually clean for a change. Alas, not getting the drink had drained all the party out of the conversation and I had gone home alone.

Tonight I wanted to see if I could get the party going again. When she walked by my seat, I just looked at her, half-smiling with my eyes but otherwise silent and expressionless. She stopped and looked at me, taking a brief break from the bustle of serving. She leaned against the bar, she and I sharing a moment frozen admidst the chaos of a busy Friday night just getting started. The bar was a dive but a popular one; the early, just after work crowd was blue-collar, mostly men over 30, trucker hats and t-shirts worn without irony, but the evening crowd just trickling in was mixed male and female, younger, and dressed in their night-time costumes, some goth-y or punk, some GQ and Cosmo. And in the middle of all that, Sharai and I shared a look and a feeling, charged up by my smirk and her naughty flirting eyebrows.

She was waiting for me to say something, but I wasn't on her schedule. No one tells me what to do! And I found the pause delicious. Unlike 95% of the women in Portland, she had no ink and only one piercing, in her navel, a simple pearl accenting her flawless belly. How did I know she had no ink at all? Some secrets are worth keeping.

I allowed the moment to stretch as long as I could, until I sensed that she was going to un-lean and go back to work, and just as it reached its breaking point I lifted my chin, inviting her even closer, intimately closer. Well, and also I'm soft-spoken and I didn't want to have to repeat myself. She leaned in so her ear was close to my lips.

"If you were a president..." I began.

She pulled back and our eyes connected, mine still smiling in what I hoped was a mysterious way, hers questioning but ready to laugh.

"...you'd be Babe-raham Lincoln," I finished deadpan, enunciating.

Her head rocked back, her mouth wide open, tossing off a genuine full-throated laugh. "Oh, that's rich, baby! That's a good one!"

I took a sip of my drink for a dramatic pause. "If you were a beer," I started again. She cocked her eye at me. "...you'd be Babe-wiser."

Again, the laugh. The Asian guys to my right looked over, perhaps comparing my softly-spoken humor to their expensive haberdashery and feeling momentarily bested. Sharai wiggled her fingers at me and went to take care of some other customers.

The rules of humor say that things come in threes; set-up the pattern, extend the pattern, then break the pattern or give the punchline. I sat there, still stoic and sipping my drink, but my mind was racing, trying to come up with another one. I'd stolen the first one, of course, from "Wayne's World". The second one had come to me in a flash of neon - the sign behind her. While she filled drinks and took money, I thought.

When she returned, I was again silent. She knew it was coming and I was only too happy to oblige. "If you were a Bible story, you'd be the Tower of Babel", carefully speaking the words as if they were profound wisdom. She rewarded me with another laugh that shook enticing parts of her body and sent rumbles through parts of mine. She leaned in again, kissing me on the cheek, and whispered in my ear, "I just want to be silly and drink and have a good time. I want to be naughty." The last word was dropped at least an octave lower than the preceding sentence, and yet, she sounded wistful, rueful actually.

In thinking about it, I've lost that sense of fun, or I had until just recently. Joking with Sharai was fun because it was purely of the moment, no expectations or baggage or sadness or anger, just finding an improvised playmate for each other's inner child.

It feels good to be getting my mojo back... baby. • 6:03 PM 1 comments

Was she "cool"?

She was cute, no doubt about it. In her 30's, blonde-ish (multiple shades) of neck-length straight hair, bright and alert blue eyes, not too tall, had some curves that were both somewhat hidden by her long black sweater (worn over a white t-shirt and black pants) and somewhat emphasized by the strap of her black bike messenger bag worn so that the strap separated her cleavage.

She sat in profile to me, she in one of the side-facing seats on the bus, me in one of the front-facing seats further back. I wanted to say "hey" just because of our proximity. If I'd had more booze in me (and since this was at 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning, by "some" I mean "any") I would have just said it and not over-thought the consequences. But I was as sober as the bus driver was, and over-thinking... well, it's pretty much what I do.

So we sat there on the bus, each in our own thoughts, as we rode to our separate destinations. I tried not to stare but wasn't too worried about appearing so, safe behind my dark sunglasses and the convenient excuse of our seating arrangement.

Five or ten minutes later she rang the bell for her stop, and as she stood up and turned to walk off the bus, I saw a line drawing, in white, on the flap of her messenger bag.

It was Trogdor.

There, on her bag, openly displayed.

As I watched her get off the bus and walk out of my life, I realized that, yes, indeed, she was cool.

Damn. • 10:17 AM 1 comments

Duct tape and paperclips

I took this picture specifically for Kevin.

Click picture for larger size.

Make note of the paperclip wrapped in duct tape stuck into the main connector.

You can also see the IDE-to-FireWire bridge connected to the top hard drive... although rumor has it that's less interesting! • 8:28 AM 1 comments

Building a RAID array on the cheap

I wanted to build a stand-alone RAID array, primarily to back up to. Backing up is good and yes, you need to do it.

I didn't want to have to build a whole new PC to use as a server - ideally I just wanted to have the drives by themselves, maybe in a FireWire box.

Turns out that drive enclosures for multiple drives are 1) rare, and 2) expensive. I found a couple at Fry's and Outpost.com for over $500. I figured I could do better, and thought that at the least I could buy several FW enclosures and string them up together.

But I found something even better: an IDE-to-FireWire bridge.

It plugs into any IDE drive, and supports a primary and secondary drive, and is (like all FW devices) able to daisy-chain off the FW bus.

This, two drives, and a power supply* makes an external drive. Two drives can do RAID striping or mirroring. Add another one and another drive and you can do RAID 5.

Nifty, huh?

I tossed the whole thing into a spare mini-tower case, and I've got room and probably power to add a bunch more drives if I want. It's not "hot-swappable" but that's not a feature I really need.

Right now I only have a 300 GB drive and an 80 GB drive so I can't do RAID yet. Once I get some more money, either coming back to work or getting a temp job, I'll pick up two more 300 GB drives and set up a RAID array. But in the meantime I've got a simple backup of my home folder for both computers at home. Yay for backing up! I love it when my data is safe.

There might be easier, cheaper ways to do this, but for now I've only spent $60 and used parts I already had on hand.

* I used an ATX 300W power supply. Did you know that an ATX power supply won't power up without a motherboard? Well, it WILL if you bridge the green wire (there's only one green wire) to any black (ground) wire. I used a paper clip covered in duct tape (to prevent shorts) to bridge them. It's amazing what I'm learning for the A+ tests! • 12:20 PM 3 comments

Double-checking myself on word choice

Main Entry: im·ma·nence
Pronunciation: 'i-m&-n&n(t)s
Function: noun : the quality or state of being immanent : INHERENCE

From Wikipedia:

The term "immanence" is usually understood to mean that the divine force, or the divine being, pervades through all things that exist, and is able to influence them. Such a meaning is common in pantheism & panpsychism, and it implies that divinity is inseparably present in all things.

• 10:55 PM 0 comments

Bucket brigade of care

In a crisis, people care. People want to help. It's what people do.

They offer help. They ask for ways to help. They often feel, themselves, helpless and I think, by offering to help, they hope to lessen their own helplessness.

When family and friends gather around one who is struck down, so suddenly and so sadly, there forms circles of care and help and assistance.

There is first and foremost, the one who has been struck down. In geometry, the center of the circle is called the origin, and so the one who is ill or injured could be considered the origin of the circle. But this is the wrong word in this sense, because it suggests that they caused this grave injury, this sorrowful state. So perhaps a better word is focus. They are the focus of the circle, the point which receives the care and love pouring in from the outer chords and arcs, and along the radii. They may be conscious of what's flowing to them. Or they may not. The focus is the most helpless. They have no one else to offer their help to and so have no way to alleviate their own sense of helplessness, because of course it's silly and selfish to try to help one's own self, right? And yet that is not only what the focus must do, it is exactly what everyone gathered around, figuratively and literally, wish most fervently.

There are those on the inner circle, and those are the folks that we most want to help. They get the most offers; people stand ready to do any thing, to say any words of comfort. The inner circle people are only one step removed from the center of the circle, their lives directly touch the stricken one. They, too, are often wished to take care of themselves and they, too, often disregard that wish.

Being as I am currently on a secondary level, I find myself in the position of both offering to help in any way I can those closest to the focus, as well as receiving offers of help from those further out. I feel guilty for accepting or acknowledging the offers of help from my friends, and selfish for not being able to offer more help to those most in need. I am simply a middle link in the bucket brigade of love and help, a temporary channel for transferring the love along its journey to the focus.

And if the focus falters or weakens, it threatens to make us feel as though we did not care or love enough.

But that has no effect. The connection of the outer circles to the inner circles to the focus exists separately from the struggle of the focus to care for their self. The truest test of the bucket brigade of care is that it is there. It's always there, immanent, inherent, waiting for an event to call it into being, but hoping that no such event arises.

Love wishes to be called into existence.

Love regrets the often sorrowful circumstances of its creation.

Which explains the messy paradox of life in the limited universe we inhabit.

The moral I take from this is to not wait for a tragic creation of love, but to find joyful ways to call it into a life. Just that: don't wait. Do it now.

How can I help? • 3:29 PM 2 comments

I may regret this post...

I may regret this post after I wake up but I will not delete it.

I spent all night getting drunk in a local bar.

I ran into a girl I'd met once or twice before. She reminds me of a girl I used to know, but she's taller and cooler and prettier and funnier. After I ran into her, I spent part of my effort at getting her drunk, too, and trying to make her laugh, and trying to get her to come home with me.

I think I would have succeeded, except the bartender cut me off. I'd only had 7 drinks. And they were weak drinks, too. But even though I told her I was walking home, that I didn't even own a car, she would not serve me any more drinks. I guess 7 drinks in a 4 hour period is too much. Hucking fell!

Once I got cut off (FUCK! It's been a long time...) I lost momentum, and the prettier, funnier, cooler girl lost her enthusiasm. I could see it in her eyes. I had to make one more play for her, though.

I looked at her and said, "I totally want to go somewhere after the bar closes and talk and laugh and drink with you some more. But," I said wistfully, "I'm afraid I already know what the answer is."

She looked at me, and smiled, and looked down, and I knew that my guess was correct. "I just want to go home and sleep," she said. "It's been fun, though."

It had been fun, and I told her I would remember this night for a long time, and before I could get too maudlin I got up and walked out the door, and didn't look back.

But I did get her email address earlier in the night... again (I'd lost it the first time I'd asked her, but that's a whole 'nother story). • 2:10 AM 2 comments

Quick thought

As I'm in the middle of a family medical crisis I might not be so post-y for the immediate future.

However, while I'm thinking about the topic, I just want it clearly stated here, publicly, being that I am of sound mind and body, that if I am ever, in the future, pronounced brain-dead...

I do not wish doctors to attempt to artificially extend my life.

Thank you. I will fill out a formal Living Will in the very near future so I get all the legal language covered. But since I've got a tiny little piece of a public internet here, I figured I might as well post it. All the important people (my family and friends) read here, and this is the easiest way to get the message to all of them, in case there's ever any future doubt.

Accidents can happen so suddenly... wow. Love freely and often, people, 'cause you never know what's around the corner.

I may be an atheist, but if I were to choose a god to swear by it would be Bacchus.

And now, I go to drink heavily and thereby influence a happy resolution. • 9:18 PM 3 comments

"Cars" review

When I first saw the teaser trailer for "Cars", I was worried. The whole idea, of people-like talking cars, just didn't seem like a good idea for a movie. I was familiar with the teevee commercials with talking cars, and that seemed OK for a short 30 second spot, but a full-length movie?

But... it was Pixar, and they had an awesome track record. So of course I would give them a chance.

Because I didn't see the movie right away, I saw reviews here and there, and sometimes the reviewer loved it, and sometimes the reviewer had reservations. More often than not, they didn't like it. All that, of course, fueled my self-doubt... but, again, it's Pixar. They haven't made a bad movie. So even if "Cars" is bad, is it bad overall, or just bad for a Pixar film?

I needn't have worried.

Several things combined to leave me with a good impression of "Cars", and if anyone else is well-inclined to these things, too, they are likely to enjoy the movie.

First, the lead character, Lightning McQueen, is voiced by Owen Wilson, and his personality shines through. Other reviewers have dissed the main character as an "asshole", and it's true that Lightning is self-centered, but he's also living inside a bubble of success that I found it easy to dismiss his more obnoxious traits on his lack of experience with the world outside of the closed world of racing. I bought into the character based on the vocal talents of Mr. Wilson and the context in which the character lived.

Second... duh. It's about cars. There's a sexy Porsche with the car-equivalent of a butt-hat tattoo (that only shows when her spoiler deploys). All kinds of motor vehicles get a character in the film, from tractors and combines, to fork-lifts, to street cars, pick-up trucks, semis... even trains, blimps, helicopters and jet planes. I don't recall seeing a motorcycle, however - I'll have to watch for that next time.

Third, the whole idea of the mythology of Route 66 is one that is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the language I speak. My dad met my mom while on a road trip - he was selling magazines for money, and she was a divorcée waitress in a diner. Or so they told me... Dad settled down once he met mom, but I swear the wanderlust has been passed down to me, because the scenes in "Cars" of just driving along the open road fill me with the longing to take the wheel and just go for a drive.

Next, and somewhat connected, the animators at Pixar apparently went on a road trip of their own; they give thanks to all the roadside attractions, businesses, and people they met along Route 66 during the credits. I heard somewhere (I'll dig up a link later) that they collected vials of sand and dirt from along the way, in order to get the colors right. And the natural scenery of Carburetor County, with its buttes and mountains shaped like Cadillac fin, fenders and engine parts, is so well-done that it feels like an exceptionally clear dream.

As usual there are so many in-jokes I couldn't possibly recount them all, and that adds to my enjoyment of the movie. One of the first movies I remember seeing was Steve McQueen in "Le Mans", my dad dragging the family out to see it. I don't remember much of it, but I do remember taking a poster home to hang on my wall, and the sounds and sights of high-powered engines revving stay with me 35 years later. So the obvious reference of naming the main character after Steve was inspired. It's touches like that, that a kid might not get, but someone with more experience will, that adds layers to Pixar's movies and set them above any other so-called "family fare".

My guess is that other reviewers may not have had the same level of affection for the topics at hand and therefore may not have been drawn into the movie as I was. And I recognize that the movie has flaws - the previously-mentioned association with teevee commercials, and the plot's strong resemblance to the Michael J. Fox flick "Doc Hollywood" both show that the folks at Pixar are either geniuses of homage or derivative. I don't care. The parts of the movie I love overshadow the few parts that don't quite match up.

"Cars" is highly recommended. • 1:28 PM 2 comments

Feelin' geeky

OK, one more small post before I go to bed and call today "done".

Hmmm... I'm wondering how much backstory to give to this story. But I want this to be a short post. So post a question if you don't get it.

Mac OS X has a system-wide spell check, that shows those little dotted red lines under misspelled words in any application where the user can, um, type. And mine has been mis-working lately. Specifically, it's working in everything except Safari, my browser.

If this had been Windows, and I was an average user, I would have probably just had to reboot to get the spell check working again. But it's not; it's the beautiful, elegant, stable Mac OS X. And I'm not; I'm an almost-certified computer technician with over 11 years of professional experience in the field of Just Making The Damned Things Work, Already!

(Sorry... post getting longer... can't help it... I'm a writer, not an editor.)

Anyway - the process that runs in the background that handles the spell check is called "AppleSpell". I poked around on some of the internets to see if there was a simple way to restart it, but, sadly, it's not quite that simple. However, I found that if I just use Activity Monitor to stop the process, and then re-enable the option in Safari to "Check spelling as you type" it did the trick!

And if that seems like a lot of effort to avoid a reboot, you just don't understand that I haven't rebooted my new sexy thing in over six days... and counting!

Yay for not having to reboot! • 9:33 PM 0 comments

Overheard

Overheard at Backspace:

"I am so Gothic I made myself cry" - Tall, goatee-d guy dressed in all black

• 8:17 PM 0 comments

Certifiable

Today I passed the first of two tests towards gaining the CompTIA A+ certification for computer technicians!

I scored 803 out of a possible max of 900. Only 515 was needed to pass the test. Maybe I over-studied?

Today's test was for the Core Hardware test. The other one is the incorrectly-named "Core Operating System Technologies" test, which will cover a wide range of Microsoft operating systems, from DOS all the way to Windows XP, and completely ignoring the fact that companies like Red Hat and Apple are also members of CompTIA and support the many certifications offered by them. Meh. Whatever.

In any case, the OS test will likely be harder for me because of my dislike of Windows. Wish me luck! • 7:41 PM 2 comments

"Cheers" with naked chicks

One of my first favorite clubs was a place called The Tin Quill in Portland, OR. It's no longer in existence, but it was a tiny hole-in-the--wall place that was basically a bar-slash-stage running along most of the length of the long and narrow room. The rest of the room was taken up by two pool tables and the bathrooms, basically.

It folded in '94, I believe, when the owners of the building it was in sold it, along with the porno theater next door, to some new owners, who turned the TQ into a pizza place and the theater into a music venue: the Aladin Theater at SE Milwaukie Ave. and Powell Blvd.

My friends and I became regulars there, and it got to the point where we would have guaranteed spots at the bar-slash-stage, and if the bartender noticed us coming in, would have "our" drinks waiting for us by the time we sat down. Except for Rodney because he was always changing his drink. Dork. It was like "Cheers" if it was on HBO.

Reason I'm reminiscing like this is because it's the one and only place I ever saw a bar fight. The place was kind of a dive and it attracted a definite blue-collar clientele and dancer.

But one night, a new guy came in, dressed up in a fancy satiny cowboy shirt and pressed trousers with piping, and he had his own pool cue, in a shiny black case with bright silver metal corners.

When Sara, the bartender, pointed out the guy, we all knew that trouble was brewing. It's not like the pool tables were very fancy - they were afterthoughts, something to fill the space up between the end of the bar and the doorway. Mostly guys talked the dancers into playing in between their turns on the bar-slash-stage. Felts were torn, the balls were chipped, the cues were crooked. Nothing special.

But this guy was obviously playing for money. What a dork.

I just sat at the bar and drank and watched the naked chicks in front of me and flirted with Sara (tall blonde with legs that when all the way up; she danced sometimes, too, but was an awesome bartender) and joked with my buddies. But after only a short time, I heard a shout from the pool tables, and I heard the "thump" of the guy with his own pool cue hitting the wall, having been pushed up there by a drunk guy in a leather biker jacket. I heard the sound before I turned to look, and sure enough, guys were squaring off against the guy with his own cue and his hapless partner.

My friends turned to look, too, and in the time it took us to turn our heads, Sara had quite literally leaped over the bar, grabbed a pool cue off the wall, and started laying into guys telling them all to back the fuck off.

My friend Terry had jumped off his bar stool and moved to the back door, away from the fight. Rodney's eyesight hadn't ever been all that great (a degenerative condition left him with Swiss-cheese retinas) and was about to follow Sara into the fight without really knowing what was going on, and I was just trying to finish my beer before we scrammed out of there. If I'd had longer arms I would have grabbed a bottle or two from behind the stage but sadly I'm kinda short and the bar-slash-stage was kinda wide.

It was all over very quickly. Sheepishly the regulars stopped fighting when they saw Sara threatening them with a pool cue, and everyone allowed the guy to pick up his now-broken cue and case and leave without any further fuss.

I remember Sara giving me and my friends hell for not helping her out, but I was honest with her - it looked like she'd had it all under control. • 9:57 AM 1 comments

Voyeurism

Yesterday afternoon, walking back from the grocery store, my eye was caught by a flash of white and aluminum on the second story of a building.

Looking closer, I could make out the white bitten-apple shape so familiar to me. It was an iMac, as seen from behind, barely hidden by the angle of my view from the street and the curtains. It coyly displayed a few cables, running under the desk on which it was poised.

...damn that was sexy. • 8:18 AM 0 comments

Lifeclock

Apparently I'm going to live to be around 77.

Or so. Unless I don't. • 5:57 PM 2 comments

Apology & update

I apologize to any readers I have left. Updates around here (and here, but not so much here) have been sparse lately.

I'm taking a mental break, a step back, a re-alignment of my goals and where I want to be, but I still have plenty to talk about, and by extension, plenty to blog about. So begining this week, I should be posting much more than I have been, and (hopefully) about a wider variety of topics and styles.

In the next two months I plan on taking a look at my first (unpublished) novel and outlining and starting my second novel. I also plan on actually looking into getting the damned things published or getting feedback on what needs to happen before I can hold in my own two hands my novel (which would seem to rule out e-publishing, wouldn't it?)

I have other plans, also, but those are the ones most related to this blog and potentially of interest to any of the readers I have left...

Thanks for your patience and feel free to comment over and over again about anything at all. I love comments! • 9:31 PM 2 comments

Sing-along

I love Portland.

I'm at Backspace, the coolest geek coffee-shop-slash-internet-cafe, hanging out with the other geeks.

I love Backspace and I love their music.

Just now, The Decemberist's (local Portland band) "Legionnaire's Lament" came on.

And everyone in the place started singing along. Or at least mouthing the word.

Yes, including me. I love that song. It's on my "Happy" playlist. • 2:33 PM 0 comments